Protesters are calling on organizers to move a planned Donald Trump campaign event on Long Island because the venue is steps away from the site where an immigrant was killed in a 2008 hate crime.
Picketers on Wednesday chanted "Trump, you're out of here" outside The Emporium, a nightclub and event space on the same Patchogue, New York street where Marcelo Lucero was stabbed and killed in 2008 by a teen who said he and his friends attacked Hispanics in what they called "beaner-hopping."
"We're not going to allow the hate from Donald Trump to come back to our community," said Eliana Fernandez.
Lucero's brother, Joselo, said in an op-ed published in Newsday that Trump espouses anti-immigrant policies and that holding the event in the space is a "thoughtless reminder of innocent blood spilled."
The Suffolk County Republican Party, which invited Trump to the fundraiser said that the event space is used often for party events. Chairman John LaValle said they have no plans to move or postpone the event.
"Just because you don't like Donald Trump doesn't mean you get to shut him out," LaValle said.
Suffolk County authorities said that they will be posting extra police outside the event space on Thursday in anticipation of protests. Streets around the venue will be closed by mid-afternoon.
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NBC 4 New York has reached out to Trump's campaign for comment.
Jeffrey Conroy was convicted of Lucero's death in 2010, over a year after the Ecuadorian immigrant was fatally stabbed. Conroy was sentenced to 25 years for manslaughter as a hate crime, after prosecutors said he and other teens were walking around town looking for targets when they saw Lucero and a friend, began yelling ethnic slurs and approached the pair.
Some of Trump's comments during his campaign for the Republican nomination have been criticized as anti-immigrant, starting with his comments that many undocumented immigrants are rapists and murderers.
In August, Trump condemned the beating of a homeless man in Boston; police said a suspect told a trooper that "Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported."
